Chapter 1 #2
“Do you want me to come with you?” Emily asks, tucking a lock of dark red hair behind her ear.
“No, that’s okay. But I feel like a shitty friend. You didn’t tell me anything about your day.”
She snorts. “There’s nothing to tell. Mr. Campbell frightened away a few tourists, and someone came in asking about the Gallagher treasure, but that’s hardly unusual.”
Mr. Campbell is her boss, a crochety old man who adores her, and the Gallagher treasure is another Apple Ridge legend—though it’s clear as glass that the Gallaghers would never risk someone else finding their goodies.
They’d rather spend every penny they have than bury it in the ground for future prospectors to discover.
Emily hugs me, despite the pukey smell, because “that’s what friends do,” and we head down to the park gates together. When we get there, she peels off to return to the bookstore, and I climb into my car, parked in a lucky spot on the side of the road.
My grandmother’s house is only five miles away, located at the back of our farm, but they’re Apple Ridge miles, down narrow, twisty roads that should be one-way but are technically two, doubling the drive time. So I have a few minutes to worry about the “surprise” I’m about to find there.
Would Miles have really come home without saying anything to me first?
And if he had, wouldn’t my other siblings have been all up in my business about it? I haven’t heard from Theo or our little sister, Isabella, at all today.
I turn in beneath the wooden Evergreens & Apples sign my grandfather hung over twenty years ago, replacing my great-grandfather’s weather-beaten sign.
He’d done that before my parents’ divorce, and my father had helped.
A few weeks later, Dad asked Mom for a separation and informed her that he’d already accepted a job across the country.
So we moved into the farmhouse with my grandparents, and we saw that sign every day—a reminder of what was lost.
We didn’t see my father much after that, just for phone calls and holidays. Then it slipped to every other holiday, and now we only do occasional check-ins and visits.
The four of us talk to our mother more, but she’s happily settled with another man, in another state, and the last thing she wants to think about is the “prison” she escaped.
My heart rate escalates when I see a car I don’t recognize parked next to my grandmother’s in front of our farmhouse. It’s a green Range Rover with Maine plates.
Maine? Why would someone with Maine plates be here?
It’s not like they could wind up here by accident.
While my brother Theo’s house is close to the apple barn, our farmhouse is on the evergreens side of the farm, hidden away down a winding gravel road with a No Trespassing sign.
Even the hot chocolate shack, which is open from just after Thanksgiving through the New Year, is much easier to get to from the main road than from our farmhouse.
A feeling of foreboding forms in my stomach.
“Surely not,” I mutter under my breath. “She wouldn’t…”
My grandmother lived in coastal Maine when she was a young woman, before meeting my grandfather. She’d kept in touch with her best friend, Francesca Cafiero, for decades.
In fact, “Nonna Francesca” used to bring her four grandchildren to the farm every summer, sometimes for weeks.
Nonna Francesca was practically raising them the same way Nonna Rose was practically raising us.
The summer visits continued right up until sixteen years ago—when the nonnas got into a shouting match at the farmer’s market that escalated into them throwing apples at each other like grenades.
Nonna Rose had declared the other woman was dead to her and hasn’t so much as mentioned her name since.
My siblings and I stayed in touch with the grandkids for a while—at first with mailed notes, emails, and texts, and then with a passive slide into social media.
Only Miles and the middle Cafiero brother, Giovanni, stayed friends after we grew up.
My brother isn’t an over-sharer, so I don’t know if they’ve been in touch recently, but they went on an “epic” camping trip together six or seven years ago.
Giovanni was the first boy I ever kissed, on a dare. I never doodled his initials in hearts on any notebooks, though. He was too much of an attention seeker for me, and I was convinced he was a bad influence on my brother.
Miles broke an arm one summer because Giovanni had dared him to jump over a ravine, and they were both caught stealing apples from the Gallaghers’ farm—an idiotic act, since we grow our own apples.
I haven’t thought about any of the Cafieros in years.
Frowning, I climb the porch steps and pause by the front door. I can hear voices inside speaking in rapid-fire Italian, which seems like confirmation that our visitor is Francesca Cafiero. Nonna always loved speaking Italian with her. She doesn’t get to use her native language much in Apple Ridge.
It also explains the early-morning panettone preparation. It’s Nonna Francesca’s favorite breakfast.
I open the door and step inside, and am immediately immersed in the rich, mouthwatering scent of tomato sauce.
I follow the rapid-fire Italian down the foyer and into the kitchen, my eyes widening when I step inside and see my grandmother sipping from a glass of red wine—a rare indulgence for her—next to an older woman dressed all in black like I am, stirring sauce in a massive pot I’ve never seen before.
Nonna Francesca looks frailer than the stout woman from my memory. This version of her would be less lethal with an apple, but there’s nothing soft about her features or her posture.